Case Study: The Washington Post builds Truth Teller and makes video searchable with Microsoft Azure Media Services Indexer (Microsoft Azure)

The Washington Post Builds "Truth Teller" App with Cloud-Based Speech-to-Text Service

The Washington Post needed a way to verify politicians’ spoken claims and make its video content discoverable, so it built Truth Teller, a fact‑checking prototype. The main challenge was converting hours of political speech into searchable text: manual transcription was too slow and an open‑source solution required excessive configuration and development.

The Post integrated Microsoft Azure Media Services Indexer to generate transcripts, captions and keywords, then matched those transcripts against a local database of fact‑checked statements with a proprietary algorithm. The Indexer link was implemented rapidly (about one week vs. an estimated six months with open source), enabling faster time to market, more useful video search results, greater video discovery and engagement, and a new way to share the paper’s political expertise online.

The Washington Post

Siva Ghatti

Director of Application Development